principles were sound; from which James and Reginald concluded that he was a man not only violently disaffected towards the powers that were, but permanently disaffected towards any possible powers which ever might be hereafter. James's jolly humour made him half laugh at this kind of thing, but there was an air of mystery and adventure about it which made it very pleasant. He began to think that it would be very fine to have the prestige of belonging to one of these secret societies, more especially in such a very tight-laced state as Prussia. He followed his German friend, hoping to see some real Vehmgericht business at all events for once in his life.

The student made a sign to the host on entering, and immediately the host pretended, in the most patent manner, that he had never seen the student before, which interested and amused James, as it also did a Prussian policeofficial who was sitting at a table drinking. Then they passed mysteriously into an inner apartment, and shut the door after them; and the Prussian official and the host winked at one another, and laughed.

"You are not going to trouble those English boys?" said the landlord. "Not I," said the policeman, "but I want him."

"For what?" 'Duelling.

He went near to slit Von Azeldorf's nose."

"Pity he did not. The ass will make out a political offence, and become a martyr."

"Of course the ass will. But he must slit the nose of one of his own order in future."

"True," said the host thoughtfully. The student led our friends into an inner parlour, and brought them up to a large lithographic print, before which he took off his cap, put his hands across his breast, and bowed. The print was well conceived and executed, and represented this :-Hungaria lay dead in her coffin. Kossuth, with a fold of his cloak masking his mouth, was taking a last farewell look at her face, before the

coffin should be closed. At the head of the corpse stood the pale ghost of Liberty, staring with a calm frozen face at Georgey, who was in the righthand corner, with a face distorted by terror and remorse, calling on the rocks to cover him, and the hills to hide him. (In reality Georgey was comfortably at his own chateau, hard at work, with nets, pins, and corks, completing his almost unrivalled collection of butterflies and moths, and perfectly easy in his mind. But we must have political caricatures.) The print was well drawn, and well executed, and our two boys were struck by it extremely, though the sad fact must remain that they had neither of them heard of Georgey in their lives.

"There he stands," said their student friend. "False and perjured traitor, with the blood of the slain Hungaria choking the lies which would rise to his mouth. Georgey-Georgey," he was going on, when a very quiet weak voice behind them said, in German,

"It was a strong measure, certainly, that of Georgey's. I confess I should not have been prepared to act so myself; but in the end Hungary will be the better, and Austria no worse."

They turned, and saw before them one of the strangest-looking men ever seen by any of the three-a man with a face as beardless as a boy's, as oldlooking as a grandfather's; a face of great beauty and power, with large, clear, luminous eyes, and a complexion like pale wax, without a wrinkle. The figure was not large, but well proportioned and graceful; the carriage was erect and bold, yet very calm and quiet, showing physical weakness, as of a man recovering from a great illness. Having said his say, he leant against the closed door, and surveyed them quietly and silently.

The German student took off his cap; Reginald stared as though he had seen a ghost; James was the first to recover his presence of mind. He cried out,

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My dear sir

"You will write out," said Arthur

Silcote, smiling, "the first book of Euclid before to-morrow morning, and bring it to my desk at the opening of school. 'De tabernis non frequentandis,' you know. You have violated one of our statutes, my boy. What is going to happen to this young gentleman?"

The young German student was being arrested. The policeman from the next room had come in, and had "taken" him.

"What has he done, then?" said Arthur Silcote.

"He has been duelling," said the police.

"And has not 'Von' before his name," said Arthur, after the young gentleman was removed. "Well, my dear boys, you seem to be getting into good company."

"We are seeing the world, sir," said James, laughing.

"One side of it, boy; one side of it." "A very amusing side, sir, surely." "Surely!" said Arthur. "When you hear a man use the word 'surely,' you always know that he is not 'sure at all. That miserable tentative word 'surely' exasperates me. It is one of the wretched phrases by which a fourthclass press writer rigs his opinion. Don't use it again."

"I will not, sir. You are not angry with me?"

"Why, no," said Arthur, smiling. "I seldom ask great favours from people with whom I am angry, and I am going to ask a great favour of you."

James waited and wondered.

"I have been very ill. I have been deceived by the doctors as to the cause of my illness. They told me that my heart was hopelessly deranged, and that my life was not worth a fortnight's purchase. This has turned out to be all a falsehood. I am as good a man as ever, with a new lease of life before me. have merely overworked myself, and I want rest. But this foolish falsehood of the doctors has produced its effect. came abroad, leaving all my old friends, to die alone like a hunted deer. Mayo, at Boppart, tells me that I am to live,

I

and stakes his reputation upon it. He has turned me out from his establishment to wander and amuse myself. Will you let me wander with you? This new life, the assurance of which I get from Mayo, has become unexpectedly dear to me. I did not fear death; I only hated it. Death always seemed to me, if I dare say so, a mistake. I never doubted for one moment the continuity of my existence; I never had any physical fear of the great break in it: I only hated that break. I believe that I hate that great, and, as it seems to me sometimes, unnecessary, break in my existence as much as ever: but Mayo, the great expert, has removed it at least twenty years. I have a new life before me. Can you understand all this?"

"Well! well! sir," said James.

"I was fresher and freer once," said Arthur, "than you are now. In the old times, when Tom and I used to go and see Algy at Oxford, I was as fresh and as free as any one. And Algy is dead, and Tom is worse than dead; and I have been dead, boy."

"Dead, sir?" said James, wondering. "Ay, dead: to hope and to ambition, and to much else. I have been dead, my boy, in a way, but I have come to life again. Come, let us walk together, and spend the day. At the end of it, shall tell me if I seem likely to suit you as a travelling companion or not."

you

our

"I can tell you that at once, sir. We shall be honoured and favoured by your company. I rather think that we are a little too young to do entirely without advice have we not just seen chosen companion walked off to gaol under our eyes? I am very discreet, no. doubt for my age; and as for Reginald, he is the soul of discretion and reticence. But we have made rather a mess of it hitherto, and there are heaps of things I want to know and cannot find out. And you are all alone, and want taking care of. We will take care of you if you will take care of us."

I

"These are all kind commonplaces," said Arthur. "But give me a trial. am all alone in the world; I have been very ill, and I am slowly recovering. I

shall be a drag on you, but I ask you in charity's sake for your company."

James tried to answer, but could not. To see a man whom he had always regarded as a prig and a bully brought so low as this affected him strongly. Reginald had dropped away from them, and they were sauntering up beside the Rhine stream together and alone.

66

Why are you silent?" asked Arthur. "Because," said James, "I wish I had known you better before."

"That would have been of little use," said Arthur. "As a fact, nobody did, except perhaps Algy, who is dead and gone. I was a failure. Try to know me now, and it is quite possible that you will like me."

What simple James answered is not of much consequence. Arthur talked on to him, as the Ancient Mariner talked to the first person he could get hold of.

"The hatred of death-not the fear, mind-which has been hanging over me so long ruined and spoilt me. The doctors, in their ignorance, gave me warning that I could not live, a long while ago. They told me that I had organic disease of the heart, and went far to ruin my life. It appears that such is not the case. I am a new man again. What the expectation of death. could not do, the removal of that expectation has done. Bear with me a little, and see."

James only half understood him; but he answered:

"One thing is plain, sir; you want attending to and looking after; and I will do that for you. Our meeting with you is a great stroke of good luck."

"But you will want to ramble and range about, and I cannot do that.”

"We can ramble," said James, "all day while you sit at home, and at night we can come back and tell you all about the day's work or the day's play. It shall go hard, between my sketches and my talk, if you do not enjoy the day as much as we do."

So he joined them, and they rambled away together southward through Bavaria towards Saltzburg.

James was at first extremely afraid of the terrible inexorably-tongued Arthur. Then he was surprised and frightened at the great change in him; and at last got perfectly confidential with him, and actually went so far as to tell him one night that he had been utterly deceived in his estimate of his character. I doubt that James had been drinking the wine of the country.

"You mean," said Arthur, "that I am not the priggish bully you took me for?"

"The words are yours, sir. You were never either prig or bully. But you were so hard and inexorable. Now you are so gentle and complacent in everything. A child could not be more biddable than you are."

"Yes; but in old times I was a schoolmaster," said Arthur, now I am a child. Did I not tell you that I was new-born? I have a new lease of life given me on the highest authority. Life with me is not so enjoyable as it is with you. I am twenty years older than you I cannot come and go, and enjoy every flower and shadow as you Yet life is a glorious good, and death is a terrible evil: ah! you may make what you like of it, but it is the greatest of misfortunes, that break in the continuity. But what do you know of death? Death has been with me night and day for many years. He is gone now, and I am as much a boy as you are, save that I cannot enjoy the world as you can. Do you understand me?"

can.

"I think I do, sir," said James, gravely.

"This perfect rest and absence of anxiety (for Algy is in heaven), combined with your kindly ministrations and attentions, are making a man of me again. Is it not so?"

"You gain in strength and colour every day, sir," said James. "And yet

"And yet, you would say, my old temper does not return. Am I not changed, then?”

"You are your real self now, sir. That seems to be the truth." "Let us hope so," said Arthur.

"I

66

"The Fliegende Blätter may probably say the same," said Arthur. Boy ! boy! there is going to be a great thing,' as the foxhunters say. Take me south to see it. You can sketch it, and sell your sketches. I want motion, life: let us go."

"We will go, sir, certainly if you really think they will fight, and if you are able for it."

"You shall carry me," said Arthur. "My brother is in the business, and on the winning side. Old Austria for ever, in spite of all her faults."

"Which of your brothers is in the business, sir" asked James.

"Tom," said Arthur. "Heaven help the Frenchman who meets him."

"I remember him," said James, “a kind man with a gentle face. He carried me to Silcotes in his arms once, after I had been beaten by poachers. By the by, you were there. Do you remember it?"

"I do, now you mention it," said Arthur. "And you are that poor little thing in the smock-frock_that Tom brought in in his arms. I never exactly realized it till now. How things come round through all kinds of confusion! My silly old aunt took you to bed that night; and you made your first acquaintance with Dora, and Anne, and Reginald. Well, then, it is settled that we are to go south, and see this war."

"It will be

"I glory in the idea, sir," said James. "I have never looked on war." "Nor I," said Arthur. a cold bath for both of us. The accessories will not be pleasant; but it will do us both good. A review on a large scale, with the small and yet important fact of death superadded; and a kingdom of twenty millions for the stake. A University boat-race, in which the devil actually does take the hindmost. Let us go, by all means."

To be continued.

THE assertion often made by a certain class of writers and speakers, that while the rich are growing richer the poor are growing poorer, is certainly, at least as regards the present century, untrue. The class of manual labourers have derived great advantage from the rapid progress of civilization and of mechanical invention, from the development of commerce and the improved and enlightened legislation of recent years. In material comfort the distance between them and

the richer members of society is certainly not greater now than it was fifty years ago. Unhappily it is true that, with the growth of wealth and population, the wall of moral separation between rich and poor appears to have become broader, higher, and more impassable. The rich see less of the poor than they used to do; know less of their habits, their feelings, and their wants; and the poor have so little personal acquaintance with the rich, that to many of them the well

dressed neighbours whom they meet in their daily walks, hardly seem as fellowcreatures, with like characters and passions, actuated by the same motives, animated by the same feelings of kindness or of irritation, of sympathy or of selfishness, as themselves.

The mutual ignorance, the incapacity to understand one another, which want of intercourse has produced in rich and poor, which prevails to an extent that may fairly be called dangerous, is illustrated by the absurd caricatures and misrepresentations of either class which find credence among the other. The things that are said of the whole class of rich men, of the aristocracy, of capitalists, by trade delegates and club orators, would fail of all effect if spoken to men personally acquainted with the objects of such abuse. The unqualified panegyrics of working-class virtue and intelligence, the dark descriptions of immorality, ignorance, and improvidence, so freely employed in political controversy, could never be addressed to an audience familiar with the real character of the "flesh-and-blood" working man; an audience who knew how many grades of moral and intellectual merit lie between the experience, wisdom, tolerance, and thrift of the Rochdale co-operators, and the recklessness and criminal violence of the unionists of Sheffield; between the working men who take the lead in returning to Parliament Mr. Mill, Mr. Hughes, and Mr. Fawcett, and those who form the most venal element of Totnes and Lancaster.

Most landowners of moderate means, or their families, know something of their peasantry; many country manufacturers know something of their workpeople; but even in these cases the knowledge is too often very shallow and imperfect. Setting aside the few persons actually and personally engaged in benevolent labours (of whom more hereafter), men and women even of moderate means, in our large towns lead a life altogether apart from that of the poor. How many of them ever speak to a working man or woman except in the way of business? How many of them have

any personal relations with persons of that class; any acquaintance with individuals in whom they take an interest, for whose welfare they care, who might not be sick, starve, or die without their knowing it? What does the large manufacturer know of the vast majority of his hands outside of the factory? Has he ever seen them in their homes? Would he know them if he met them in the street? What does the shipowner or merchant know of the men who sail or unload his ship, or carry his goods to the warehouse? They are engaged for the job, by his captain or warehouseman, at the shipping-office or the street corner; they are unknown to him by sight or by name. So far as our towns are concerned, the cases are few and exceptional in which there is any personal tie between rich and poor -any recognition on either side of a connexion that does not end with working hours, or of any individual claim on an individual for anything besides fair wages and honest work.

This alteration is not, apparently, due to wilful estrangement on the part of the rich; still less to any fault on the side of the poor. But, even though no one be wilfully in fault, it is painful to contrast this state of things,-the fruit though it be, of advancing civilization, increasing wealth, and better industrial organization, with what old men now living can well remember to have witnessed, in the service of a kindly or wellprincipled master. The father of the present manufacturer often knew every one of the hundred or two of hands whom he employed. They lived in their employer's cottages, close to his house and mill, within reach of the daily visits of his family. If one of them were sick or had a sick wife or child, his wife and children visited the cottage, and the master could give what aid was necessary. He would speak to them by name, ask after their families, and commend the progress of their children at the school, at which his own children taught. The merchant had but few men, and they were constantly in his service, and did all his work. It took some weeks to unload